


Walking Through the Dark

by HyperLittleNori (Shiguresan)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence from Season 3b, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Heavy Petting, Hints at Body Dysmorphia due to scars, Hurt/Comfort, Kisses, Kissing, Love, M/M, Morally Grey Peter, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Russian Translation Available, Scars, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Acceptance, Steter - Freeform, Steter Secret Santa 2020, Stiles Stilinski Has Scars, implied sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28229739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresan/pseuds/HyperLittleNori
Summary: Stiles glared at him, feeling his face heat when he remembered the last time they’d met. He dragged his hand through his messy hair. “Feel free to take a diversion away from my house next time if you want to avoid trouble,” he snapped, voice rough from sleep.Peter gave a little laugh. “Oh, Stiles, I find the kind of trouble you invite quite diverting.”
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 30
Kudos: 584





	Walking Through the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cywscross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/gifts).



> **A translation in Russian by the wonderful[skrawny-mad](https://skrawny-mad.tumblr.com/) is now available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/10271886/26430293).**
> 
> My Steter Secret Santa 2020 gift to the wonderful Cywscross! Wow, just wow. I was so lucky to be paired with you! Your wishlist just spoke to me, I read through it and I sort of did a mini explosion with all the ideas I wanted to write for you and in the end I literally had to write them all down in a sort of brainstorm to decide what would be the best gift to incorporate as many of your ‘likes’ as possible.
> 
> I hope it’s everything you wished for – it was a joy to write for you. Continuing with my theme for the year of writing hurt/comfort that is more about the comfort and recovery than the hurt. I hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> Story Notes: Canon compliant up to the end of series 3. Canon divergence from beginning of series 4 and it's worth noticing that Isaac stuck around and Stiles and Malia never slept together.

The first thing he became aware of was the all-consuming cold. His feet hurt with sharp stabbing pain all across his insoles and it was so dark he couldn’t even see a shape in the blackness. He shuddered, wavering on his feet and tried to use his hands to feel his way in the dark. His fingers caught nothing but air. He spun, heart racing in his chest, fast and hard and he could barely breathe because he couldn’t see and he was lost and couldn’t…he just couldn’t…

He blinked then, realising his eyes had been closed the whole time, hence the blackness. Now, with open eyes, stinging with the wetness of panic, he stared around himself. Trees. Not old and crooked and gnarled like those of the preserve but tall and slender, still clinging to their leaves despite the onset of fall.

A glance down at his feet showed them scratched and sore. He winced, checking the soles to find blood weeping from some of the deeper gouges. It was nothing new, he supposed, but he’d really thought things would be different this time.

With a sigh, his fear fell prey to tired resignation. Stiles scanned the trees and made his way toward the lights in the distance. He’d only made it as far as the little picnic area at the back of his neighbourhood, a little man-made copse of trees for kids to run and play in. But by the feel of his feet and the chill in his bones, he’d been walking around in circles a while.

The back door of his house was open, of course, and the porch light was on, which meant his dad wasn’t home yet. He filled the washing up bowl with warm water, grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink and sat down at the dining table to soak the filth off his feet, hissing at the pain of the warm water. As they soaked in the bowl, he pressed his aching forehead into his hands and watched the red and black splodges dance around under his eyelids from the pressure of his fingers.

He should’ve expected it really. It _had_ been a while since the last time though, back in the dorms at college and before that, when the Nogitsune had squirmed its way into him from the darkness.

It was still hard to remember it sometimes, hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t, especially when he was alone, in the dark, still fuzzy from sleep and lack thereof all at once. He blinked hard, trying hard not to think how the overwhelmed tears brimming on his lashes felt almost soothing to his tired, sore eyes and scooped one foot up to survey the damage.

One puncture wound, but the rest just abrasive, superficial scratches. He pulled the antiseptic spray toward him, but as he did so he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

He froze. His dad always drew the curtains when he was on a night shift, something about making potential troublemakers think the house was more occupied than it was. Mostly, Stiles thought his dad was a damn good cop and he knew Stiles was jumpy as hell these days. He probably knew that more often than not Stiles leapt at his own shadow, or more accurately, his reflection in the dark glass of the windows after the sun had gone down.

His dad wasn’t perfect though, he sometimes forgot and apparently he had tonight.

Stiles stared at his reflection for a long time, not daring to blink lest another shape replace his own face. Or worse, that his own face would twist and change somehow. He’d always had an overactive imagination but paired with the hallucinogenic side-effects of sleep-deprivation it was down-right dangerous.

He stood suddenly, marching over to the window despite his throbbing feet and threw the curtains shut, before turning to face his own reflection in the mirror above the side-table. He glared at his own face, as if daring his mind to play tricks on him. He could just about see the tendrils of dark, scarred flesh curling up above the collar of his t-shirt from the nape of his neck. He hobbled back to the dining chair.

*

“You’re limping today, you alright?” Scott asked, jogging to Stiles’s side where he was doubled over at the side of the trail.

Stiles waved him off, straightening up as he struggled to get his breath back, sweat making his shirt cling to his back even in the cool, misty morning air. “I’m good, just a human trying to keep up with a literal pack of wolves.”

Scott gave him that infuriating lopsided grin that, no matter what kind of alpha or almost qualified veterinarian he became, looked exactly the same as the first time Stiles had seen it. It was comforting and yet made his chest twinge with longing for the simplicity of the old times.

And damn his feet hurt. And he was pretty sure he had a stitch in his side.

“You’re like…worse than Finstock,” he panted, straightening up as the world gradually stopped spinning. Since he’d graduated and come back to Beacon Hills, he’d been joining Scott and the growing pack for morning runs through the preserve to get his fitness up ready for the deputy exam. He’d passed the exam but he was worried he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the training if he couldn’t get some sleep soon.

“Dude, you look wrecked, are you sure you’re okay?” Scott squeezed his shoulder but Stiles shrugged him off, still panting a little.

“I’m good you...you should keep up with the werecubs, that new guy is so green a car alarm could set him off.”

“Derek and Isaac are with them, they’ll keep them under wraps,” Scott said easily. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to the Jeep and we can head to mine, it’s closer, we can shower and I’ve got the new Gears of War. I’ve been waiting to start the campaign with you.”

Scott was already directing him back the way they’d come toward the road, easy and calm and collected, like a guy who had it all figured out. They’d seen each other when they could, considering they’d both done pretty full-on degrees at different colleges. They spoke or texted nearly everyday but it was still shocking sometimes to see it.

In just a few short months, Scott would be a qualified veterinarian under Deaton’s guidance, was a pretty good alpha too, with both Derek and Isaac backing him in their ragtag little pack that just seemed to keep collecting strays. He was relatively organised and together and Stiles…Stiles was meant to be starting his deputy training soon and he felt like a mess. He just didn’t get why.

The morning pack runs were something that apparently Scott and Derek had started to organise to give the betas an outlet and a bunch of other stuff that Stiles summarised as ‘bonding time’. Stiles had been tagging along since his college graduation, not only in hopes of getting fit enough to pass his physical exam, which he had, but also find whatever he’d been missing, which he hadn’t.

He’d thought going to college, getting a degree and getting the hell out of Beacon Hills would help him find it, but it hadn’t. It’d just made him feel lonelier. And so he’d come back, to his dad, to his friends, and he hadn’t found it here either. That spark of whatever it was that made him whole. He didn’t even know what he was looking for except to be…better. Better than he’d been for the last few years.

“I’m good. I just wanna go home and sleep, to be honest,” Stiles protested and it wasn’t a lie. He did want sleep, but that wasn’t the reason the idea of getting changed at Scott’s made his skin stomach swoop with unease.

“Well, I’ve got work after this, and tonight’s the full moon so I should really…you know, some of the new guys still struggle. But tomorrow, when you’re rested up?” Scott suggested with his lopsided little puppy-dog grin. Stiles agreed with a laugh and a joke but it felt strained and he knew Scott had noticed something was up, he always did. He’d long since stopped trying to ‘help’ though. His way of helping now was to plough ahead like everything was normal, which worked, for the most part.

Something Stiles had learned from a young age was that everyone else had their own shit going on, their own way of dealing. Him and Scott, Lydia, Kira, Isaac, Malia, even Derek, they’d all gone through so much of it together but somehow Stiles felt alone and he couldn’t remember how not to be.

On the long walk back to his Jeep, he wondered at the possibility of sleep-walking again tonight. Exhaustion and stress had set him off before. It was better to be safe than sorry. His dad was on shift so he’d have to be creative.

Unlocking doors and windows was second nature, but maybe a padlock would be different enough to stop him from finding a way out as he slept. He thought about stopping at the hardware store on the way home and maybe installing a padlock bolt right at the top of his bedroom door. Standing on his swivel chair was perilous enough when awake, with his clumsiness. Surely he couldn’t manage that kind of co-ordination and unlock a combination padlock in his sleep? A random number, something he’d never remember. He could write it down maybe.

His mind raced with something mixed between determination and hope.

*

It didn’t stop him.

He must’ve remembered the code subconsciously because he was pretty sure he definitely couldn’t read in his sleep. His knee ached and he wondered if he’d fallen off the chair in his attempt or if he’d injured himself some other way. Either way, he found himself outside again, this time in dense woodland with a thick bed of leaves beneath his feet. He cursed. He thought it might be the preserve but it was hard to tell. It was dark anyway and the moon was high above him – a full moon of course.

He cursed under his breath and looked around, trying to get his bearings. He was just grateful this time he’d had the cynicism to wear shoes. A low growl rumbled somewhere behind him and he swallowed thickly, heart ticking up as cold sweat beaded down his neck. It’d be just his luck that after everything, he’d be attacked by a grumpy mountain lion or...

But as he turned, he saw distinctive glowing blue eyes that definitely did not belong to an animal. He backed up, nice and slow, keeping the twin lights in the darkness in his sights as he groped for something, anything as a weapon. His fingers closed around a thick branch just as the creature lunged.

He caught a flash of fangs and a twisted face and knew he had his hands on a wolf. He brought the branch across its face and it howled, staggering back. Omega then, if it’d been hurt by that. Stiles knew he didn’t stand a chance against a beta. Probably not much of a better one against an omega either but adrenaline was rushing in his veins now, his fight reflex so stubborn he couldn’t stop if he tried.

He jabbed hard, his stomach jerking as the sharp point of the branch stuck somewhere in the creature’s side and then he bolted. He scrambled clumsily down the steep incline and cried out as he skidded the last few feet, unable to stop himself from landing hard in the shallow stream that wove its way through the preserve.

Brain fully awake now, he patted down his pyjama pockets but found no phone and cursed again. His only warning was a howl of fury before the omega dropped into the clearing behind him. Stiles grabbed the nearest rock and smashed it into the creature’s head but it didn’t stop. He hit it again and again, blood spraying and the omega snarled, fangs flashing and sinking into Stiles’s shoulder.

Stiles screamed as he fell back into the shallow water, spluttering and choking before smashing the rock with all his might into the creature’s jaw. He felt something crack and the omega rolled off him, jaw dislodging from his shoulder. Stiles rolled with him, pressing down on it with all his weight and bearing him into the water.

Blood pounded in his veins, poured down his neck. Stiles pushed down with all his strength, keeping the wounded omega submerged until it stopped moving.

He staggered back then, gasping for breath and clutching his wounded neck, stumbling right into Peter Hale, who was standing on the bank.

“I see I needn’t have rushed to your aid when I heard your voice,” he said lightly, as if they were bumping into each other at the grocery store.

Chest heaving, Stiles just stared at him, throat raw as he tried to gasp for breath. “How – how long have you – have you been there?”

Peter cocked his head with that enigmatic smile of his. “Long enough to see you save yourself quite well enough. I always have liked you, Stiles,” he said by way of answer, strolling passed Stiles to the river, where he kicked the omega over onto its back. It floated little, but it twitched too – alive then, Stiles thought with equal parts relief and horror. But whatever he thought about not quite killing his assailant was short lived as Peter tore out its throat and tossed its lifeless body to the bank.

“No manners at all, coming into old territory to hunt on a moon night. Is nothing sacred anymore? I’ve a good mind to let the coyotes have it,” he sneered, washing off his hands distastefully in the river before turning back to Stiles.

Stiles took a step back when Peter reached for him, wary as ever. Peter had fought alongside him, had helped in the whole Nogitsune fiasco in his own way, and given a hand over the last few years to keep Beacon Hills safe, when he was about, which wasn’t often. But Stiles wasn’t stupid enough to forget he was all out for himself.

Peter sighed impatiently, and then flicked his fingers at him as if urging him to get on with it. Stiles glared him down, even as he lifted his hand off the seeping wound in his shoulder. Peter studied it carefully for a moment.

“He didn’t get a good grip. The punctures are clean enough and not too deep. If you get yourself to a hospital quickly it’s nothing a few stitches can’t cure. It’ll likely scar though,” he said lightly, focussing on Stiles. His eyes pierced him and Stiles felt suddenly naked under his gaze, standing there in his pyjamas, the lower half of which was soaked through with water, the upper half with blood.

“What are you doing here, Peter?” Stiles demanded coldly, even as he felt his blood run hot with anger, shame and the still pumping adrenaline.

“Patrolling my territory on a full moon night.”

“It’s not your territory,” Stiles snapped, surveying his surroundings before heading in what he hoped was the right direction. The moon was still climbing he thought, so he used it as reference and headed north-east, hoping his guess on his location was correct.

“Even if your baby alpha protects Beacon Hills, Stiles, this forest was Hale land long before he was even born and it will be long after we’re all dead,” Peter said, matter-of-fact and sure, surer than Stiles had ever heard anything in his life. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Peter fell into stride beside him.

“Is this where you’ve been all this time? Hiding in the preserve?”

Beacon Hills had been quiet for a long time, although there had been something to do with a wendigo back in the spring. Peter had helped out then, but no one had heard from him since and before that he’d been on and off the radar. Although Stiles hadn’t been interested in keeping up with much lately, the last he’d heard, Derek had been unable to track him down.

“I’ve been around. I’m a busy man,” Peter said lightly.

Stiles hadn’t felt this awake in what felt like forever. His brain was racing trying to figure Peter out. “Are you going to bury that omega?”

“I’ll deal with it, yes. Even trespassers could have their uses.” Peter’s voice was thoughtful though, calculating and Stiles didn’t quite like the sound of it. When he spoke again, the innocence to his voice made Stiles even more suspicious. “I deduce that since you still haven’t told anyone about your nightly adventures, I’m guessing you want to avoid the attention that’d come with a trip to the hospital?”

Stiles stopped dead and turned to face him. “You’ve been watching me.” He thought back to the other night, when he’d sworn he’d seen someone at the window, or on those ‘nightly excursions’ as Peter called them, where he’d sworn he hadn’t felt alone. “Why?”

Peter smiled. “I like you Stiles. I’ve been looking out for you – just when I’ve been passing by, of course.”

“Why? What’s in it for you?”

“Just the knowledge that there is someone left in this town that I can stand, that’s all Stiles, I assure you,” Peter said dismissively, but then he looked thoughtful. “But…if you’d like a hand in tending your wounds…there maybe something you could help me with tonight?”

Stiles hesitated, but his neck was still bleeding and he was feeling light-headed now. He wasn’t sure if he could make it out of the woods even if he were heading the right way, which he still wasn’t sure of. He also wasn’t sure he could trust Peter at all, or that he had much choice. Even so, Peter’s gaze looked even and certain. More than that, Stiles thought from the moment Peter had watched him stagger out of the stream he’d carried an air of something deeper still – respect.

Respect wasn’t something Peter had for anyone in Beacon Hills, as far as Stiles was aware. That changed things.

He huffed in frustration. “Whatever it is, can it be quick? Because I’m really in need of stitches here.”

Peter canted his head again, as if listening to Stiles’s heart, but he didn’t seem concerned. “We have time. It just so happens I was in the vicinity for another purpose tonight and we’re close by.”

Stiles kept his guard up as Peter lead him to a place where the trees looked old and warped by time, some felled to the ground long ago and overgrown with moss and brambles. But there was something oddly familiar about the web of leaves woven around some of the branches.

“It’s a special kind of mistletoe,” Peter said from a few paces back. “This kind was bred especially by druids of old. Hard to find unless you know the scent. It’s very subtle. Not poisonous from skin contact to a human.”

Looking from the oddly pretty little web of vines, leaves and crisp blue-white blooms that almost glowed in the moonlight, then back to Peter, Stiles thought for a moment. “But poisonous to werewolves, right?”

“Oh, deadly,” Peter assured him, “If you wouldn’t mind dropping a few sprigs in here for me…” He held out a small satchel and Stiles hesitated.

“How many people are going to die if I do this for you?” Stiles asked cautiously, watching Peter’s face for any sign of a lie. He may not have been a werewolf but on numerous occasions, he’d been a better judge of character than some of his werewolf companions. And besides which, of all the treacherous, evil things he’d done, of all the half-truths, Stiles didn’t think Peter would outright lie. He didn’t need to, his sense of morality (or lack thereof) made lying redundant.

“I don’t want the power to cause bloodshed, Stiles. I can do that perfectly well right now if I wish to. What I want is the power to protect myself.”

There was that word again, that small but insurmountable word that Stiles had heard so many times since he and Scott had gone looking for that body in the woods. It had many meanings but the one it’d referred to so often lately was engrained in his blood as if he were born supernatural the same as Peter.

Power.

He understood now.

Stiles understood what Peter had been up to all this time. What he didn’t understand was why _he_ did what he did next.

Holding Peter’s gaze just for a moment, he took the satchel and twisted a few sprigs off the lower branches, which were just within his reach, and dropped them into the bag.

As he handed the satchel back, Peter looped it over his shoulder and then regarded Stiles carefully.

“You may be a human who runs with wolves, Stiles, but you have something Scott McCall and his little patchwork pack do not,” he said easily, stepping forward, slow and cautious, as if trying not to spook a frozen deer.

Stiles felt his heart tick up again, light-headed now from the blood oozing down his neck but also something else. Peter stepped in close, searching his face, gaze lingering over Stiles’s mouth when his lips parted around his hastened breathing.

“You have the ability to make a choice without standard perceptions of right and wrong to cloud your judgement. You assess a situation in a dozen ways, all while your little friends are stuck on the same single decision. That mind of yours is erratic but quick and not many other people see that.”

Stiles was caught between the compliment and the insult of the insinuation that he was as morally grey as Peter Hale, when Peter stepped so close Stiles could feel his breath on his skin. He felt cold all over now, apart from where Peter touched him, shaking both from the cold night and also the aftershocks as adrenaline left his body.

“I followed the sounds of your screams, fully expecting to rescue a lost little lamb and I watched you save yourself. I watched how ruthless the survival instinct made you and I haven’t seen anything that fascinated me that much in years.”

Stiles tensed his jaw and tried to step back, because Peter Hale said ‘fascinated’ like it was pillow talk and Stiles was unprepared for the way the sound of it pulled low in his belly. But when he did, he felt his foot slip on the damp earth and his arms flailed to try and save himself, only for Peter’s fingers to wrap around his bicep and hold him steady.

“I’m nothing like you,” Stiles hissed by way of defence but Peter only smirked.

“Maybe not in some ways, but I stand by what I said years ago, you would’ve been a good beta.” He seemed to sniff subtly then, in a way Stiles may have missed if he weren’t so close and one-million percent concentrated on Peter’s every movement.

“You haven’t lost too much blood, if we get you patched up sooner we can avoid you having to go to the hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Stiles said resolutely, even if he didn’t feel it, but just as he opened his mouth to ask how good Peter’s sewing was, the hand that’d been gripping his bicep slid back and up to cup his neck at the base of his skull. “What the–?”

“This might feel quite strange, but it shouldn’t hurt,” Peter said, soft and coaxing and even as he spoke, Stiles felt the pain from his shoulder drain up through his neck and out into the warmth of Peter’s fingers. It felt like a head rush as it left him and he staggered, no choice but to sag as Peter leaned in, breath ghosting over his now numb shoulder.

“This isn’t done very often, it’s rather… _personal_ , but if you don’t mind, I’m quite willing?”

The heat in Stiles’s stomach tightened. His racing mind, even through the rush of feel-good hormones from simple contact, thought about consent and the fact that he was twenty-one and how he hadn’t been hard in what felt like forever. He thought about the bad things Peter had done and then he thought he hadn’t felt this good in forever and just closed his eyes.

“Yeah…yes.”

He thought he heard, no _felt_ the vibrations of a hum next to his ear and then heat covered his wounded shoulder, reaching right down passed the numb, wounded tissues and deep into him until it consumed him.

‘Personal’ was an understatement. He felt like his veins were on fire, buzzing with the sweetest, most excruciating vibrations. It was all-consuming, made his knees buckle until he was caught against Peter’s body which was so hot compared to how cold Stiles himself had felt moments ago. He felt like melting and his cock was so hard he felt it leak wetly in his boxers without any direct contact.

For a moment, caught in his spinning crescendo of vibrating heat, he thought Peter was drinking from him like a vampire. Then he realised Peter was licking, sucking softly, bathing the puncture wounds. Stiles had an abstract memory of searching pack behaviours in wolves and wondering how they’d translate to werewolves, before Peter’s fingers massaging at the base of his skull into his hair made him tense.

He groaned in spite of himself, voice echoing in the trees and unbidden, his hips rocked forward, brushing his clothed erection into Peter’s hip.

Peter hummed then drew back, Stiles’s shoulder cold and spit-wet. He felt a finger trace his skin, whole again, he thought, as the glide was smooth. Healed.

“Well, you must like me more than you thought, Stiles, to react like that,” Peter said, sounding so very far away. “It’s usually quite intimate yet platonic, something shared between born wolf families and packs quite regularly. But you...you’re quite something, aren’t you Stiles?”

Stiles’s eyes fluttered open and he swallowed thickly as Peter came into focus. Because he didn’t understand. What did Peter mean? What had made it different? Had it been him? Had it been Peter?

“I think, perhaps you find me just the slightest bit attractive,” Peter said, so apparently Stiles had voiced his questions aloud. But before he could respond to Peter’s words, he felt Peter’s thumb slide down slightly over the left side of his neck, where the scarring curled, just in Peter’s line of sight. The scarring he’d hidden from everyone since he’d climbed out of the mess the Nogitsune had left for him.

“Is this what you’re so afraid everyone will see?” Peter breathed and Stiles jerked back, stumbling out of his reach. It was too quick, too much, too soon, however and his whole world spun and jerked until he dropped hard to the cold damp earth.

*

When he came to, he was warm. He was tired and his skin was tingling all over like the leftovers of pins and needles, but he was warm and relatively comfortable. Squinting his eyes open, he found himself staring at his own bedroom ceiling. He wasn’t under his own covers. Instead the comfortable but worn burgundy throw blanket, that usually lived on the couch because its colour and weave hid all sins, was wrapped around him. He blinked at it as he sat up and considered the dried blood on his pyjama shirt.

Well, he supposed he should be thankful that Peter hadn’t undressed him – or buried his body in the woods.

A quick check of his phone showed a text from his dad, saying he’d be back late, or early, depending on which way you looked at it, he supposed.

He threw his pyjamas straight in the trash and stepped into the shower, examining his shoulder at an awkward angle only to find a slightly raised pale pink edge. He sighed. What was another scar, really? The bite mark, it was a war wound, it was an injury, the rest was…

He shook his head, stepping out of the too-hot shower and drying himself off.

He felt a bit weak, but no worse than he would’ve if he’d recovered from the flu or a rough lacrosse practice. Still he took caution and held onto the banister as he headed downstairs. There was a note on the kitchen counter in tight, neat handwriting.

_You should eat iron-rich foods for a few days, just in case. Check the fridge._

_And don’t worry your secret is safe with me._

Stiles frowned at the note, before opening the fridge. There was a large takeaway box from the fancy restaurant downtown filled with what looked like beef and dark, leafy green vegetables. He sort of knew how his dad felt now, having his meals prepared for him like a child. It sent a frisson of irritation through him, but also…appreciation. And the latter was more irritating than the food itself.

He microwaved it anyway, because it was good food and it’d be a waste not to.

He hung out with Scott for a bit, then later had lunch with him, Isaac, Lydia and Malia. No one mentioned anything about an omega or a body in the woods but then, he hadn’t really expected them to. Stiles knew Derek had been looking for Peter for a while and if Peter still didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t leave a trail that could lead back to him.

Stiles rubbed absently at the back of his neck, where Peter’s hands had cradled him and tried hard not to think about what it meant that he hadn’t told his friends about what had happened last night. Malia watched him shrewdly as he laughed at something Lydia had said about one of her professors at MIT and he had to duck his head to avoid her gaze.

*

It was his dad’s last late shift, so he wasn’t surprised to find the house empty when he got home. He was surprised, however, that his dad had left him some meatloaf that someone at the station had brought in for them both to share. There was half a portion left with a little sticky note on that promised they’d have dinner together tomorrow and to come to the station if he was lonely. Stiles didn’t make it that far. He fell asleep on the couch with a belly full of reheated meatloaf.

When he woke, however, it wasn’t in the forest or even his bedroom. When he woke, it was to a gentle but firm grip on his shoulder steering him back up the steps to his porch. He felt himself moving under the coaxing touch but as awareness gripped him fully, he came to a halt on the threshold of the back door and turned.

Peter gave Stiles an enigmatic smile. “Good morning, Stiles.” The sky was still dark, so it was early if it was indeed morning. Stiles’s dad should be home soon. The late shift ended at around 2am. What time _was_ it?

“You should really tell your father, or think of more inventive ways to keep yourself in at night,” Peter mused, “what if I hadn’t been in the neighbourhood for a midnight stroll?”

Stiles glared him, feeling his face heat when he remembered the last time they’d met. He dragged his hand through his messy hair. “Feel free to take a diversion away from my house next time if you want to avoid trouble,” he snapped, voice rough from sleep.

Peter gave a little laugh. “Oh, Stiles, I find the kind of trouble you invite _quite_ diverting.”

*

Stiles didn’t think he walked every night, or at least, some mornings he woke up in his bed without mud on his feet so he assumed he’d stayed put. Or at least not ventured further than the bathroom.

He kept thinking about the time his dad caught him peeing in the hall closet when he sleepwalked as a kid. He hasn’t done that since, at least not to his knowledge. Or if he had, his dad was the best and didn’t tell him about it.

Even on the nights where he didn’t walk though, he felt wrong in a way he couldn’t explain. Sometimes it was like being asleep while he was awake, far away from himself in a way that had varied in intensity over the last few years, but had never gone away entirely.

It couldn’t be because he was back here, he’d experienced it in college too. It was just inside him. It’d bloomed again when the Nogitsune’s shadow had been cast over him and like that creature, he’d thought it would fade with time, along with the stark memory of being consumed by him. But it didn’t change, it didn’t stop, it didn’t fade, just like the impossible scars on his body didn’t either.

Still, in the weeks that followed his encounter with Peter in the woods, more than once he woke to a familiar voice or gentle, large hands guiding him back into the house. Once or twice they’d even steered him back into his bedroom.

Sometimes he would turn as he woke, to find Peter had already vanished into the night. More often than not though, Peter would still be there and offer him that smile that was only half-there, sometimes as tired as Stiles felt and yet more sincere than any grin Peter Hale had ever given him before.

*

Stiles pulled the collar of his jacket up against the chilly night breeze on his way to the front door. He’d been to a late night movie with Lydia, Malia, Kira and Scott and he was beat but more positive than he’d felt in a while. There was definitely a good tired and a bad tired. That afternoon had definitely been a bad tired and it would’ve been so easy to roll over on the couch and pretend he hadn’t seen the message.

The irony of being lonely but not wanting to go anywhere wasn’t lost on him; it was the story of most of his college life. But he was getting good and forcing himself out of his funk. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes, like tonight, it ended up being one of the good nights, in between the days where he literally just needed to self-care and eat his weight in peanut butter cups.

But tonight was good, he felt good. Good but tired. His dad was home so the lights were on, radiating a soothing sense of home but he still jumped out of his skin when he caught a shadow out of the corner of his eye.

“ _Jesus_ ffff…’’ Stiles cut himself off and shook his head slowly, turning fully to see Peter stepping out of the shadows and into the light cast across the path. “You scared the crap out of me!” he hissed.

Peter canted his head with a small, apologetic smile that was just that little bit teasing still. “Just taking my usual walk around the area, making sure my favourite deputy in training was still tucked up in bed.”

“You are such a creep,” Stiles mused without bite. “No walk for me tonight. Not the sleeping kind anyway. Not yet.”

Peter studied him for a beat, glancing at the house before meeting his eyes again. “You haven’t told him yet?”

With a sigh of frustration, Stiles descended the porch steps again, taking a seat and running his hands through his hair. “It’s not like…I’m not just being pigheaded about this okay? It’s just…I can handle it.”

“Just because you can handle it by yourself doesn’t mean you should,” Peter said lightly.

Stiles scowled. “Says the literal _lone_ wolf.”

Something hard flickered behind Peter’s eyes then, ice and steel. “Not by choice.”

With a wince, Stiles dropped his arms to his knees and stared up at him fully. “Man, I’m so….I didn’t–”

“I know you didn’t,” Peter said, sounding tired himself then, but instead of backing into the shadows, he took a seat beside Stiles on the steps. “Did you sleep walk at college too? Or is there just something about Beacon Hills?” he asked after a long silence.

“Sometimes,” Stiles admitted, staring at the shape of their shadows laying side-by-side on the pathway. “I couldn’t really escape. I had two roommates, it weirded them out but they got the habit of locking the door and hiding the key from me. Great way to lose friends and alienate people I'll tell ya that.”

“But it started after the Nogitsune.”

It wasn’t a question.

“No. When my mom died. But it stopped after a while. Then picked back up when…well, when the Nogitsune happened, I guess. They come and go in waves. I’m still waiting for this wave to end.”

Peter seemed to consider this. “And so you're back in Beacon Hills.”

“Yep. You really can't take the boy out of the woods, I guess.”

Peter leaned back a little looking at him with his head tilted just so, the porch lights casting one side of his face in a soft glow that made Stiles’s breath catch.

“Well, for what's it's worth,” Peter said with that same charming smile that had once pissed him off so much but had always been sort of attractive. “I'm glad you’re back, Stiles.”

Stiles smiled in spite of the heavy topic. “You haven't changed.”

Peter grinned. “On the contrary, I am quite the changed man. You just haven't seen it yet.”

Stiles thought that actually maybe he had.

There was a moment then, a minute perhaps suspended in a place where time didn’t matter. Where the light caught Peter’s eyes so they glittered, where Stiles’s own gaze roved his face, taking him all in. He found his breath coming a little quicker, heart beating a little faster in a way it hadn’t since Lydia had kissed him that time to shake him out of his panic attack. Only this made him feel more light-headed than a panic attack or even Lydia Martin had ever made him. He felt almost giddy with the rush of dopamine or serotonin or whatever it was that made your head spin in the best way.

Peter glanced back at the house then, as if he’d heard or seen something Stiles hadn’t. “You should tell your father, Stiles. Pushing through, pretending everything is alright until it is, sometimes it works. I’m a testament to that. Sometimes you just have to keep going, that’s how your body copes with stress, it waits for a safe place to decompartmentalise. But this is different.”

Stiles stared into his eyes and thought about what Peter had gone through. The traumas they had both faced were so different but their coping methods, deflection, compartmentalisation, dry humour in the face of danger and bloody-minded independence, they were all the same. They had both been jaded by experience and had arguably come out all the stronger for it, but not necessarily better.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

For just a second, Stiles felt like they were the only ones in the world, like they were still out in the woods somewhere and everything else had fallen away around them.

“What you went through four years ago was incredibly traumatic,” Peter said, more gentle than Stiles had ever heard him speak, with a sad sort of understanding in his eyes that counterbalanced his stoic expression. “Not to mention invasive. That’s not the kind of thing you can get through alone, not something you can outrun and it’s not anything you need to hide.”

Stiles knew that, he did, he wasn’t ashamed, not exactly. Or maybe he was. Maybe he was a little, ashamed of of being the fragile human who ran with wolves and was just so…so broken.

He dragged his hand up the back of his neck, through his messy hair and stared out into the night, ignoring the sting in his eyes.

Peter was right, you couldn’t outrun it, because it’d just catch up with you the second you slowed down, the second you started to relax and feel safe.

“I just think I'm always gonna be this way, like…like there's always going to be a hole where the guy I _should've_ been stood.” He wanted to ask Peter how he moved passed it. How he seemed so _together_ after what had happened to him. But he knew the answer, he supposed. Peter wasn’t together, he wasn’t passed it, he was as messed up as Stiles was, he just had a different way of dealing with it.

To his relief, Peter didn’t look sorry for him, didn’t look pitying, only longing, as if his greatest wish were to dig his fingers into Stiles’s veins and drain the hurt away as effectively as he could physical pain. “You are fractured, perhaps a little ragged around the edges but you are very much whole,” Peter said, voice husky and heated in the cold night. “And until you stop fixating on the man you thought you'd be, you'll never see the man you are.”

Stiles didn’t look at him, kept staring at where their shadows merged together on the ground. “And who _is_ _he_ even? This…this mess? Thinks he can be a cop, thinks he can help people when he can't help himself?”

“Some of the best people help others before themselves, or so I’ve heard,” Peter said, sounding a little more his cavalier self then. Stiles did look at him at last then, something in him settling at the calm, collected reassurance he was radiating. Reassurance that it would be okay somehow, eventually, without either of them needing the exact words. Or at least there would be more days like this, more good ones that were worth living through the bad ones for.

“I've never been that kind of person,” Peter continued, clearly amused at the idea.

“And what kind of person are you then, Peter Hale?” Stiles asked, his voice treacherously breathy.

“My only hope is that you like me enough to find out,” Peter replied lightly. And with that he rose gracefully to his feet and started down the path. Stiles stood too, watching him until he was swallowed up by the night and then he headed inside.

His dad was waiting for him at the kitchen table with two cups of hot chocolate and a knowing look in his eye. It was the same look he’d used to wear back when he used to catch Stiles snooping in the files he brought home.

Unfortunately, his dad was a damn good sheriff.

“Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?” he asked, not accusing, but definitely not without suspicion either. “What’s Peter Hale doing seeing you to the door like your prom date?”

Stiles dragged his fingers through his hair and sighed, taking a set opposite his dad and warming his chilly hands on the mug of hot chocolate. “He’s just…Peter, he always does whatever he wants, whenever he wants to, that’s pretty much his deal.”

His dad eyed him shrewdly. “And what does he want from you?”

“Oddly enough, I think this is his way of…being nice.”

It could seem sort of creepy, he supposed, if you were an outsider.

A long sigh dragged out of his dad and Stiles watched him rub a hand over his face wearily, before heading into the living room to sink down onto the sofa. He drank heavily from his mug as Stiles sat down beside him. He probably needed the late night sugar rush to process the idea of Stiles and Peter sitting together like that. Because it hadn’t been anything inherently debauched or anything, but there had been intimacy and there was no way his dad hadn’t noticed.

“Kiddo,” he rubbed his eyes, the same way Stiles did when he was tired or stressed, “You’re twenty-one years old and he’s…how old is he even, I mean really?”

“Thirty-four, maybe thirty-five, I’m not exactly sure when his birthday falls. But I know he’s eight years older than Derek and Derek’s twenty-seven, so…” He cut himself off before his rambling could take off with him. Now was not a safe time to ramble. He was way too excited, too hyper after whatever had happened out there on the porch.

“I know the things you’ve gone through,” his dad began, “and not just the supernatural stuff, it’s all aged you inside more than your years but he’s….I…” He looked Stiles in the eye. “I just wanted normal for you. I’d hoped once you graduated you’d have a chance at that.”

Stiles cradled his mug in his hands on his lap and let his thumbs trace the rim, slightly tacky with hot chocolate where he’d drunk from it. “Dad, even before the werewolves, I was never gonna be normal,” he joked, but his dad didn’t smile.

Stiles looked at him seriously then. “Look, I…I don’t know what I want yet. I’m twenty-one and I’m about to take my first step in the career I’ve wanted since I could walk. And to be honest, I’ve sort of just been going ahead on autopilot for so long now. I haven’t even really processed I’m finally going to be a deputy, or thought about it, or really cared about anything in the last few years, to be honest, I’ve been that messed up. I haven’t really wanted anything.”

“But you want him.” His dad looked pained by his own words. He had the same look on his face when he’d given Stiles the ‘birds and the bees’ talk when he was a kid.

A red flush burned through Stiles’s cheeks. “Well, maybe…yeah I…” He licked his lips nervously. “There’s something to be said, I guess for going through things that most people my age can’t understand. No one’s ever been able to understand me, dad, not even Scott or Lydia. But he just…he sees me. And I know it could be weird, I know he’s older, I know I can be a spazz–”

“Stiles,” his dad began admonishingly but Stiles pressed on.

“But it doesn’t feel weird to me. And maybe for a while, for the first time I just wanna see where life takes me, now I know I’m gonna have one. Just see how it goes, with Peter, with all of it. Or not. And if I mess up, then…well you’ll be there.”

His dad’s eyes softened then and he reached up to touch Stiles’s shoulder and squeeze gently. “I’ll always be here, kid. You know that, right?”

Stiles nodded, not trusting his voice.

“Just when I was starting to like the guy,” his dad sighed again, resting his head back against the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “I should’ve guessed really that he was up to no good when he kept donating to the local charities and bringing the good doughnuts to the station whenever he _just happened_ to come in with Derek to consult on a case that looked supernatural.”

A laugh burst out of Stiles unbidden.

His dad rolled his head to look at him and said resignedly, “He’s ruthless and smart and ambitious and charming in that sort of creepy way.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows. “Dad, do _you_ want to date Peter Hale?”

“I just mean, I can see why you’d be flattered, why you’d…you know, be attracted to that. He’s not hard on the eyes.”

“Dad, I am not flattered. I’m not the kind of guy that can be flattered or…manipulated. Zero manipulation zone.”

“I know that,” his dad said, “I do. I just needed to be sure because if I find out he’s pressuring you or anything like that, Chris Argent left me a cache of wolfsbane bullets before he took off.”

Stiles rolled his eyes at the supernatural version of the old cliché and relaxed back against the sofa to stare at the same spot on the ceiling as his dad. After a while Stiles said, “I think mom would’ve liked him, you know?”

His dad groaned. “That’s what I’m afraid of. She had horrible taste.”

With a scoff, Stiles pulled his dad into a hug that was almost too tight. It was only then that he realised this was the closest to okay he’d felt in a long while. He didn’t always sleep through the night, didn’t always stay in his bed and he still couldn’t quite look at himself in the mirror after a shower until he put a shirt on but he was doing okay.

Drinking deeply from his mug for chocolatey courage, Stiles thumbed the ceramic rim again. “Dad, so…there’s something I want to tell you that’s not got anything to do with Peter Hale. I mean…it sort of does, I guess. That’s sort of how Peter and I crossed paths again, when I came back to Beacon Hills. But what I mean is it’s not _because_ of him. And I’ve been trying to just go along with it, just deal with it, you know? Only I’m thinking I might not be able to deal with it. Not alone anyway. And I just…I wanted to tell you. Now.”

His dad leaned forward, looking worried so Stiles continued quickly. “It’s not that bad. I mean…well maybe it is. The source of it might be anyway I just…” he sighed, caught up by his own flapping tongue. “I’ve been sleepwalking again. For a while. It comes and goes but lately it’s been full on and I’ve been so tired and I just…” He met his dad’s eyes fully then. “I might need your help.”

He hated that Peter was right. And what was more, he sort of hated himself for taking so long to get round to asking for help. Because the second his dad’s arms wrapped around him, Stiles instantly felt like a weight had been lifted.

The walls he’d built around himself were of his own making. He hadn’t meant to and it wasn’t his fault, but he’d built them nonetheless. Now he was finally breaking them down – even if it did feel like it was happening one brick at a time.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

*

Not long after Stiles started his deputy training with Parrish, there was some unrelated misunderstanding with some hunters passing through town. Nothing too dramatic but everyone got involved, even his dad and it was a big mess that sorted fizzed out in an anticlimactic verbal warning when Chris Argent showed up as mediator to calm things down.

Before that though, Derek did take a bullet to the arm and somehow wound up back at Stiles’s place where Stiles’s dad had the exact same wolfsbane in his own cache of bullets. It was a typical type used by hunters, apparently.

Derek sat with his arm stretched across the table in a way that was so familiar to Stiles that he kept smirking at Derek. Derek of course just glared at him as Stiles showed his dad how to use the wolfsbane from the bullet to seal Derek’s wound and ultimately let him heal.

While his dad was emptying the bullet, Stiles’s curiosity got the better of him. He asked Derek, if he believed what Peter had said about Laura, about him going feral in a mixture of survival instinct and trauma and all the rest. If Derek believed any of it.

At first Derek had looked suspicious, that oh so familiar frown creasing his brow but he did seem to be thinking about his answer, seemed to be studying him and Stiles wondered if he could smell Peter on him or something.

His dad didn’t say a word. He was the best that way.

“I was his alpha for a while,” Derek said at last, tone betraying nothing. He was looking a little pale and clammy from the wolfsbane but he definitely seemed sure of his answer. “You can’t lie to your alpha, not with a bond as strong as blood.”

So that was a yes then, Stiles surmised. He wondered if Peter ever became an alpha, if he’d be Derek’s once again, or if Derek would stay with Scott. Or could a pack have two alphas?

His dad pressed the wolfsbane powder into the wound in Derek’s bicep and Derek clenched his fangs around a snarl of pain, but the wound smouldered and closed and Derek seemed to sink back into the dining chair with relief.

“I’m not saying he’s not dangerous, I’m not saying he’s not done bad things,” Derek breathed. Sweat beaded across his brow still, but a little colour had already returned to his face. “But he wasn’t lying about what happened back then. I know he wasn’t.”

“Well if you want to ask me what I think,” his dad said at last, wiping his hands with an antiseptic wipe and then clearing the mess off the table. “I think he’s done things that are morally and legally wrong. I think he’s killed people but I’m also real enough to know that sometimes, taking a life isn’t as black and white as it seems in the movies.”

For a moment Stiles thought he could see the time his dad had spent in the army flashing across his face, the time he’d had to use his gun to take the kill-shot. He knew more about the grey areas of life and death than most, he supposed.

“I’ve also seen a lot of murderers in my time and he’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before,” his dad added, looking far away just then.

Stiles and his dad had talked about it before, back when his dad had first become privy to the knowledge of the supernatural world. They’d talked about right and wrong and about Kate Argent and the Hales. They’d talked about the things that Peter had gone through during the fire itself and the years after, imprisoned in his own body, what that could do to a person’s mental state without even considering the werewolf side of things.

He had blood on his hands for sure, but how much of it was evil was up for debate and certainly not for them to judge. His dad had said that to Stiles once, and he was the smartest person Stiles knew. And a frighteningly good judge of character.

“He is a lunatic,” Derek said as if this was his way of agreeing. He sounded a mixture of annoyed and fond.

“A former lunatic,” Stiles mused, “he’s much better now.”

*

“You don’t have to watch out for me you know, I’m sure you have better things to do,” Stiles said one morning when he found himself peeing in his own garden bushes. Thankfully it was only the back yard and at a ridiculous hour, so it was unlikely the neighbours had seen.

Peter walked behind him as he ascended the back steps, but didn’t reply until he turned to face him. “I’m out most evenings anyway, running errands.” He said it as if it was no trouble, but Peter didn’t go out of his way for just anyone, didn’t help anyone unless he had an ulterior motive or unless he wanted to. So why _did_ he want to? Stiles didn’t get it.

He seemed to know what to do as well, how to deal with Stiles when he was asleep. Not a lot of people did. He didn’t shake him awake or really engage. Just watched him like a shadow and when safe, gently tried to guide him back the other way. More often than not, Stiles thought just having someone standing in his way was enough to make him turn and walk back where he’d come from, that’s how his dad had used to manage him anyway, when he’d been a kid.

“Who was it?” he asked on a hunch as he stepped back inside the house, looking back at Peter just as he’d begun to turn away. “That you’ve dealt with before that sleep-walked?”

Peter’s face was neutral, eyes scanning Stiles for a long moment before he responded. “It was Laura, actually, when she was younger. She used to go and open the front door or run the kitchen taps, harmless things mostly. But sometimes she would disappear into the woods and get herself into all sorts of mischief.” He sounded almost fond but with a touch of bitter sadness to his voice.

Not for the first time in the last few months,Stiles thought about the story Peter had always told them about the night Laura had died. The story about an effectively wounded, unstable omega that had finally grown strong enough to move after years of solitude in his own paralysed body, driven mad by his own grief to seek enough power to heal himself fully. To protect himself. To form a pack of his own so that he could finally be safe, be avenged.

Stiles had always known the stuff that came later, the planning, the scheming, the destruction of the hunters responsible for the fire, even the stuff to do with Scott, all of it had been way above the capabilities of a mere feral werewolf. But he’d never completely believed the first part either, that Peter really regretted what his instincts had driven him to do to his niece for survival. Not even when he’d spoken with Derek about it. Not until just then.

His thoughts ran away with him long enough that Peter turned again to head back into the shadows.

“I hope you make a better alpha this time around,” Stiles murmured softly, knowing Peter would hear him.

Peter paused again, glancing over his shoulder at him. He clearly hadn’t realised Stiles had figured it out. There was a fleeting moment where his face betrayed his surprise, but it was gone as soon as Stiles blinked. “I aim to please.”

Stiles licked his dry lips in the cool night air and asked, before he could stop himself, “Why does it matter so much to you, being an alpha?” It just didn’t seem worth the trouble, if Stiles was honest and more than that, he didn’t understand why Peter was messing around doing whatever he was doing in the woods rather than just outright killing some other alpha. It seemed like he’d been searching for years for a way to achieve what he wanted and it just didn’t make sense. He wasn’t naïve enough to think Peter _wouldn’t_ kill another alpha, if he had to. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand him at all really, which made the pull in his stomach, the fluttering heat in his chest all that more frustrating.

Why did he gravitate toward this man, expose his vulnerabilities to him while pretending to be okay to everyone else? Stiles didn’t think he’d ever met someone as dangerous as Peter Hale, didn’t think he ever would and yet he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t not feel.

Another flicker of something crossed Peter’s face in the shadows, only just visible from the lights of the house and Stiles wondered, just for a moment if Peter felt the same, because he answered, soft and honest and unwavering.

“I was helpless when my family were burned alive in front of me and for years after, trapped in my own body. I won’t be helpless again.” It made sense, it was the truth, Stiles thought. He could even relate to it, understand it in a way Scott, Kira, Derek, Malia or Lydia wouldn’t be able to. But as was more often than not with Peter, it wasn’t the whole truth.

After a moment in which Peter seemed to consider his silent reaction to his words, Peter added, “you haven’t told them about what I’m doing.”

It wasn’t a question. He knew Stiles hadn’t said a word and he didn’t understand why. It was refreshing to not be the only confused party, Stiles thought.

“If I find out you’re slaughtering people again to get it, Scott and Derek are going to be the least of your problems,” Stiles promised darkly and Peter smiled, wide and shark-like.

“I’ll consider myself warned.”

*

Stiles again didn’t tell Scott and the others what Peter was up to and it felt like a slight betrayal every time they hung out and he never said a word. At the same time, however, it also felt like it wasn’t his secret to tell. He’d read things in the files about the Hale fire that he would never tell Scott or the others, things about Peter and Derek’s family.

It was the same as seeing Scott’s prick of a father do things when he was drunk when they were kids, they were things you didn’t tell others, not even your best friends. It felt fundamentally wrong to say something and so he kept quiet.

It had nothing to do with the way Peter seemed to have appointed himself his protective shadow and everything to do with common decency and respect for things you didn’t touch. Not even with his lack of normal social skills.

Another thing that wasn’t affected by Peter’s protective behaviour was his sleep deprivation. Telling his dad had helped. It felt comforting, to know that his dad understood why he was tired or grumpy or quiet. His dad had also avoided working late when he could, so he could lock Stiles’s door so he couldn’t get himself into trouble at night. But even when he spent the entire night in bed it felt like he’d gotten no sleep at all and it was starting to have an effect.

He was just bone deep tired, more tired than he’d felt when the Nogitsune had first started to nip at the edges of his senses. Between that and deputy training he was really struggling. His dad had suggested that he postpone his training for a while but that felt like giving in somehow and he wasn’t ready to give in, wasn’t ready to lose this battle, not yet.

He was feeling more and more disorientated and dizzy lately though, and one morning as he was getting out of the shower, it hit him in a harsh wave he couldn’t ignore. He braced himself on the bathroom sink, only a towel around his waist, another hanging limply from his hand where he’d been rubbing his hair dry. And there he stood, not daring to let go in case he dropped to the floor and brained himself on the tiles.

He’d always been good at compartmentalising. In truth that was probably what had let him survive this long in Beacon Hills. But being back here properly, being home again had broken open old wounds that he couldn’t lock away or cover up. Like the fact that Allison should’ve been here with them, like how everyone here knew what he’d gone through, knew why he wasn’t the same and loved him anyway and that was almost worse than being discarded out of hand because he didn’t want that to be all they saw when they looked at him.

Back at college, no one had known, no one had cared and that was easier. Lonelier but easier. Then he’d just been the weird guy who sleepwalked sometimes and always avoided the social gatherings and celebrations. But now he was home and like a survival instinct, everything he’d kept locked away was leaking through the cracks, about to break at any moment.

There were good days, days where it was easier, where he almost forget, but some days it felt like the longer he tried to find himself, the more desperate he felt.

He let out a hysterical little breath as he dragged a hand over his damp face, remembering his childhood therapist trying to explain to his grieving ten-year-old self that the things he pushed aside to deal with later couldn’t stay locked away just because he didn’t want to be a burden. They’d resurface, she’d warned him and he hadn’t listened and hadn’t learned.

He closed his eyes for a moment and waited for the rush of hot chills that came with pure exhaustion to dissipate. When it passed he wiped his hand across the steamy mirror’s surface to consider his reflection. His face was an odd colour, a clammy, pale face framing tired eyes. But as he stepped back, all he could see was the mottled mess splayed across his pelvis, creeping around his left hipbone like a twisted, warped branch reaching around from the scar tissue on his back that just _shouldn’t be._

A noise from below startled him from his reverie. He frowned, haphazardly tugging his sweats and t-shirt onto his still damp skin as he hurried downstairs. For a moment he just stared around the hall, the living room, looking for something out of place, until another thud came from the back door.

He made his way into the kitchen, unease prickling up the back of his spine, a sense of wrongness filling him as he rounded the corner.

He stopped when he caught sight of the figure through the window of the backdoor. Frozen for only a second before he bolted forward. He wrenched the back door open to Peter Hale, listing slightly on his feet, expression pinched in determination to keep himself upright, before he lost the battle and tipped forward. 

Instinctively Stiles caught him, his body slamming weightlessly into Stiles’s chest, knocking the air from his lungs. All Stiles could do was break their fall, landing hard on his backside and awkwardly catching Peter in a tangled mess on the kitchen floor.

“Peter?” he gasped out, eyes raking over the state of him, thick gashes opened up all up his arms and torso and even across his face. His veins were risen and dark, almost black against his ashen complexion. “What the hell happened?”

Peter let out a hoarse laugh that was cut short in a grimace and a sharp wheezing breath. “A test,” he managed roughly, “it was…part of it.”

Stiles frowned tightly. The wounds weren’t bleeding heavily, had seemed to have started clotting but they weren’t closing, weren’t healing like a werewolf, like Peter should be. “A test? Test of what?” he demanded, voice betraying his panic if his racing heart already hadn’t. “Of how much you can bleed before you die?”

For just a moment, Peter’s wince almost twisted into something resembling a smile. “Not…not how much. The right blood – had to prove it was the right blood.” He sounded almost delirious.

On instinct Stiles looked around, searching for help but his dad was out and there was no one storming the house after Peter. He kicked the back door shut, just in case - not that anything supernatural couldn’t easily break through a door, he supposed.

He looked back down at Peter.

“So what was a it a test of? Your blood type? Did you offend some nurse at a blood donation drive?” He wondered if he could drag Peter to the downstairs bathroom, or even the couch. Should he not move him if he was wounded? Or was that only people with a neck injury you couldn’t move? Did that even apply to werewolves?

“We should get you to the couch, big guy,” he said when Peter’s eyes slid shut, but as he shifted to try and get in a better position to help Peter to his feet, Peter’s hand flew up, catching Stiles’s wrist in a vice-like grip, claws extended, fangs bared like a threatened, wounded animal backed into a corner. At the same time, his eyes blazed the same crimson as the dark wounds carved into his body.

For just a moment, Stiles knew a beat of fear, for just a second he was reminded of the feral alpha Peter had been once before. But he still looked like Peter around the fangs and something flickered in Peter’s piercing alpha-red gaze then that was nothing at all like what Stiles had seen the last time Peter had been an alpha. Recognition, confusion and guilt. Guilt for scaring Stiles? Whatever it was, Stiles felt like he’d been sucker-punched by the sharp blood-red of those eyes and what it meant.

“Oh my god, you did it,” Stiles breathed, equal parts awe and admiration and unease. Because after years of researching and struggling, Peter had done it, he was an alpha and Stiles wasn’t sure what that meant. Only that Peter wasn’t like he was the last time and he was pretty much laying in Stiles’s arms and wounded and staring up at Stiles like everything was falling into place.

“Sorry,” Peter managed, blinking away the red glow as his fangs receded. “It’s… a lot. It’s taking a while to settle. I didn’t think it would be this…and I didn’t…” He looked like he was fading in and out of awareness and hanging on out of sheer determination. Stiles watched his face for signs of consciousness but then after a long moment Peter added hoarsely, “didn’t know where else to go.”

Stiles felt something treacherous flutter in his chest and he exhaled roughly before steadying his resolve. “Okay, well, let’s get you laid out, then we can see what we’re dealing with, huh?” He looped one of Peter’s arms carefully around his neck and rose slowly under Peter’s weight, with Peter struggling to take some of it on shaking legs that, judging by the gashes in his jeans, bore the same stark wounds.

The concern Stiles felt lessened somewhat when Peter winced regretfully at the couch as they stumbled toward it. “I’m covered in blood.”

Stiles scoffed. “Dude, my dad resigned himself to blood on the couch a long time ago. Come on, help me out, you’re heavy as hell.”

Somehow they got Peter laid out and Stiles managed to get his shirt off to assess the damage. “It’s not bleeding but it’s not healing, at least not werewolf style.” When he looked up, however, Peter’s eyes were closed and his breathing was even. He’d passed out then, Stiles guessed. He hesitated at the side of the sofa for a moment, balanced awkwardly on his haunches before heading into the downstairs bathroom to grab the first aid kit from under the sink.

The wounds weren’t ragged, weren’t dirty or visibly contaminated in anyway. They looked almost clinical in their precision – or magical, Stiles thought absently as he sprayed them to fight any infection. Peter didn’t so much as twitch, not even when Stiles awkwardly wrapped bandages around his torso and removed his trousers to get to the long gashes across his thighs.

Determinedly ignoring the hot flush and guilt that touched his face from effectively stripping an unconscious Peter down to his underwear, Stiles pulled the throw blanket over Peter’s lower body to give him some dignity before kneeling again at the side of the couch. He carefully lifted his arm by the wrist to examine the damage to his forearm and bicep.

The more wounds he examined, the more Stiles realised they looked like angry welts that had burst open from the inside rather than an attack from the outside. Stiles’s brain was running a mile a minute and he twisted Peter’s arm a little to spray the exposed red wounds before reaching for the bandages again.

It wasn’t as good a job as Melissa or even Scott could’ve done but it’d keep the wounds clean until they started to close, he hoped. But just as he tilted Peter’s hand a bit to better tie off the knot just at his wrist, Peter’s fingers twitched, grasping his firmly. When Stiles looked up, Peter’s eyes were open and warm, watching him thoughtfully. Just like that, the clinical setting changed into something different. Intimate, _personal._

Stiles licked his dry lips absently. He couldn’t help but notice that already Peter looked a much better colour. Peter’s eyes followed the movement of his tongue before darting back up to meet Stiles’s gaze.

“Are you going to heal?” Stiles asked, his voice huskier than he wanted. “I mean…do I need to get you to a hospital?”

Peter studied him for a beat before shaking his head slightly. “It was a lot of blood and magical injuries take longer to heal. I should be alright once I’ve rested for a while.”

Nodding, Stiles couldn’t help but let his eyes drift to where the beginnings of Peter’s chest hair, not quite covered by bandages and his insides tightened.

There was something seriously wrong with him, getting aroused over an injured person, but when he forced his gaze back up again, Peter didn’t look offended or annoyed. He looked…intrigued.

Stiles quickly gathered the scattered items back into the first aid box and rose to replace it in the bathroom, but Peter’s voice stilled him.

“Thank you,” he said, voice warm and soft like he was saying so much more.

Turning back to look at him, Stiles swallowed, unaccountably nervous all of a sudden, like whatever had gone unsaid between them just then in that intimate moment had changed everything, laid everything bare for them both to see. And yet neither of them dared acknowledge it.

“We’re even now,” Stiles said, as indifferently as he could manage. But Peter was lying there, not much more than naked under a blanket on his couch and he tilted his head slightly to regard him as if they both knew better.

“You could’ve called Derek or even Scott to help me somehow and I’m sure I would’ve survived just as well. It would’ve been more than enough to return my favour. You didn’t have to tend me yourself.”

For some reason, Stiles was suddenly reminded of the documentary he’d watched once on the grooming behaviours of wolves within a pack, particularly to an injured packmate.

He frowned, hesitating on the threshold of the living room door for a long moment before he could regroup. He clutched the medical tin like a lifeline, as if that were the only thing keeping him from exposing everything.

“I guess it just…felt right,” Stiles managed at last, finally breaking away to replace the tin under the bathroom sink. He lingered in there, splashing cold water on his face and staring at his reflection in the mirror, wondering what it meant that this was the first time he’d felt his heart beat like that, the first thing he’d really had any reaction to in years.

He watched his own face, unable to escape the distinct heat still lingering in his cheeks or his almost dazed expression. He was excited for crying out loud, excited at Peter’s proximity and he’d just done something not entirely moral he was sure to become an alpha and he was _dangerous_ for god’s sake, Stiles _knew_ that and yet it didn’t change anything.

Trying to be resolute, he turned to head out of the bathroom, all while surveying the bloody mess of his t-shirt and winced at the splatters of blood. On his way up the stairs, a glance into the living room showed Peter still immobile on the couch, and so reassured, he pulled off his shirt in his room and tossed it into the hamper, digging through the drawer for a fresh one.

He was turning and heading through his bedroom door again even as he pulled it down over his head, but as he stepped out into the hall and pulled the hem down, he found Peter standing on the landing. His hair was a little mussed and his eyes bright with interest, but not in a way that made Stiles afraid.

He wasn’t afraid of Peter at all, actually he just… _wanted_. That wanting, that basic desire for something, _anything_ had been so absent for the last few years of his life that it was like an electric shock, a current pulsing through him then, freezing him in place with its heat.

Licking his lips again, he hesitated in the hallway, watching him uncertainly. “Should you be on your feet?” he asked. He wasn’t sure what betrayed him more, his eyes or his voice but either way Peter seemed to react to it, his posture easing slightly. He stepped closer and he wavered a little but for all that he didn’t look weak. His proximity was heady.

“Can I see?” Peter asked, as if Stiles hadn’t spoken. The soft tone and gaze told Stiles exactly what he meant by that.

He stiffened, defensive all of a sudden. “What? No. Just…no.”

Peter looked like someone who had finally found the keyword to break a perplexing code. But he said nothing, gave nothing away.

Dragging a hand through his still damp hair, Stiles awkwardly straightened his t-shirt. “You’re barely standing. How did you even get up the stairs without falling down?” he asked, moving a bit closer in case his legs finally did give out under him. The spare bedroom was nearest; if he could get Peter in there he could rest there. How long would it take a werewolf, no an _alpha_ to recover from that sort of injury? Stiles didn’t even know what he’d really done.

“Sheer bloody-mindedness,” Peter replied lightly, as Stiles helped him to sit on the edge of the bed, in the spare room. It was covered in a simple cotton sheet. Stiles would have to dig out some spare bedding – if he could convince his brain into rebooting.

He stepped back, quickly putting space between them since Peter was still only in his boxers and really looking too good despite the situation. The gashes were almost closed already and the light from the hall fell on his skin, his face, an soft glow that gripped Stiles and held him in place in spite all the sensible notions of why he should step back clouding his head.

“The wounds will heal but my strength may take a while to come back to me,” Peter said, sounding distinctly displeased by the idea.

Stiles nodded. “It’s cool, I’ll…I’ll speak to dad, I’m sure it’s fine. I just…I mean what sort of test was this exactly?”

In the muted light, Stiles almost missed the tired smile that played along Peter’s lips, almost.

“It was part of the ritual, to test my blood, to check if it was Hale blood, but also to test my resolve. My will, I suppose.”

“I guess I just don’t get it,” he relented at last, still standing in front of where Peter sat on the edge of the bed, feeling awkward and fidgety but also reluctant to move. “Was it really worth all this hassle? Becoming an alpha?” This way in particular, he thought, because couldn’t Peter just go find another alpha to kill? Stiles wouldn’t even be too concerned if Peter hunted Deucalion down, if he was honest, the thought of letting that guy go still rankled him even after all this time.

The way Peter had done it just seemed like a lot of effort. Stiles didn’t even really know all the aspects of it, apart from it’d taken him years, apparently.

Peter watched him from across the room, hands resting on the counter behind him as he contemplated his response.

“There has been a Hale alpha in this land since before it was known as Beacon Hills. Our family go back to some of the first settlers here, that gives you some idea as to the age of the alpha spark that burned in my sister’s eyes.”

Stiles blinked at the revelation as it all slot into place. “You didn’t just want any old alpha’s power,” he breathed, “you wanted the same power that’s been handed down through your family for generations.”

He was distracted momentarily by the thought of the ugly old vase his mom had inherited from his grandma. _Her_ mother had brought it with her when she’d first arrived in America and so it was a much-loved, albeit grotesque, family heirloom. His mom had loved it, its history, what it meant for all her family had been through over the generations. This wasn’t exactly the same, but he understood the sentiment behind it.

He frowned then, however, remembering what had happened to that ‘alpha spark’. It hadn’t been stolen because Derek had died and it hadn’t been willed onto the next of kin. Derek had surrendered it to save his sister and Cora hadn’t become an alpha in response. Surely it’d just sort of…burned up with all the energy in the transfer or something? He wasn’t really sure how the physics of alpha healing worked.

“I don’t get it, isn’t it gone?” he asked.

“Nonsense,” Peter said, sounding almost disappointed in Stiles’s answer, like he expected more. “Old power like that doesn’t just disappear. Nothing vanishes, Stiles, you’re a smart man, you know that. Things change, but they never fade.”

Stiles’s frown tightened. Even so, how did Peter get it back from wherever it’d gone to, whatever it had changed into? “So…it had been absorbed somehow. By the air or water or…” His eyes went wide. “The Nemeton absorbed it.”

Peter’s lips twitched and he almost looked impressed. “That tree is the foundation of Beacon Hills. Its roots are tapped into every natural and supernatural force in this town. Just as our bodies return to the earth, so does an alpha’s spark when it is uses in the kind of exchange Derek performed to save Cora. When it isn’t passed on, that is, which it almost always is – unless it’s stolen by another wolf.”

Peter explained it all as if he weren’t sitting there in just his boxers, as if it didn’t matter to him at all. And all the while Stiles couldn’t stop looking, noticing every line of lean muscle and he couldn’t stand still either, especially not when he started to wonder if Peter was displaying for him.

“Jennifer, or Julia, whatever her name was, she dragged herself to the Nemeton after she was defeated,” Peter continued, “And her final attempt at saving herself was the start of it all.”

Stiles inclined his head slightly. He felt so close this way and Stiles was thinking clearer than he had in months and the way his insides tightened, hot and quivery, the way his chest tingled didn’t change when he looked into Peter’s eyes. “How does she fit into all this?” he murmured.

“Your baby alpha let her go and I did what he couldn’t, to keep us safe, yes, but more than that. Her blood in that place, a place that already knew her magic, it was enough to give me a place to start at least.” He sipped from his scalding coffee without much difficulty and Stiles caught himself watching the way the man’s adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. He had a really nice neck.

“The Nemeton is the embodiment of earth magic. It’s a conduit for the energy that flows through everything that’s ever lived or died here. As old as the earth itself and that kind of magic is something only druids know how to access, I needed to access it but I didn’t quite know how. I only knew that it was possible.”

Stiles could see where this was going and he was getting even more confused. “But Deaton wouldn’t help you, he…does he even like you?”

Peter laughed. “He never did, really and he’s meant to be neutral, but even so,” he grinned almost shark-like, “he always had been sweet on Talia. The thought of the spark that had once been hers, her legacy lying dead in the ground was enough for him to share what he knew, although I had to do the rest and it took me years. This is old magic, Stiles, and I was alone in my endeavours.” His eyes glittered with a warmer, fonder light then. “Except for a little help from you that night with the mistletoe of course.”

Stiles shivered. Did he really have to make it sound so sensual? But then, it had been, hadn’t it? Stiles had felt it reach parts of him that he’d sworn had been left behind when he’d crawled out of the Nogitsune’s hold.

“So you manipulated Deaton’s love for your dead sister, killed Jennifer, probably sacrificed a few deer, misused some questionable herbs and poisons and what, that was it?”

“I can assure you, it wasn’t as easy as you make it sound,” Peter said, rising shakily and staring down into Stiles’s eyes, although, the gap between their heights had lessened considerably. Stiles wasn’t the same kid that Peter had bullied into helping him in the parking lot at the start of all this, and Peter wasn’t the same either. Well, not entirely. He still looked perfectly guiltless in killing Jennifer. Although to be honest, Stiles wouldn’t lose sleep over the death of the thing that’d nearly killed his dad, the thing that really was the soul reason for why he’d done the ritual that’d opened the door the Nogitsune had slipped through in the first place.

Stiles still hated Jennifer and if he was honest, he hated that Scott had just been able to let her go because he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to. He should not have found that special greyscale of morality so relatable. Should he?

Peter must’ve been able to read his racing thoughts because he stepped closer, searching Stiles’s face as if he were reading through a passage in a particularly gripping book. A book that opened for his eyes only, it seemed. Stiles exhaled slowly and watched Peter’s eyes fall on his lips as his breath passed over them.

“Have any of your weird little rituals opened any doors or anything?” he asked, watching Peter’s expression for a lie.

“Accessing something that wasn’t meant to be part of the Nemeton isn’t the same as opening a door. I had to only pluck it from its surface. You have to understand, the power is meant to be passed down or won in battle. What happened to Cora was dark magic and Derek did what he had to do to save her but the power he used to do so, it never belonged in the ground, never belonged with the Nemeton, not really.”

Stiles blinked. He thought he understood. What Peter had done was akin to untangling a vine from the tree’s trunk, where Stiles and his friends had ploughed straight into it, cleaved into the bark as if with an axe and let the darkness spill out.

And he’d do it all again in a heartbeat if he had to, to save his dad. That was his own type of grey area, he supposed.

Nothing that’d happened in the last few years had been anyone’s fault, except Kate or Gerard Argent. Everyone else had just played the hand they’d been dealt as a result of their actions. At least Peter was strong enough to own the way he’d played the game. It didn’t make him right necessarily, but it made sense.

“So you just wanted the Hale spark back, just to have it? Just to…continue your legacy? To protect yourself?” He couldn’t forget the look in Peter’s eyes, the tone of his voice when he’d said he didn’t want to be helpless again. It’d been a haunted sound that’d resonated deep in his bones. “You don’t want revenge or to kill Scott or…?”

“I just want to live, Stiles.”

As close to the way he would have had his family not been burned alive in front of him, Stiles thought and he couldn’t blame him. Everything Peter had said made perfect sense and it had nothing to do with the way his insides did that tight, fluttering thing when Peter stood this close.

“So when you said the ritual tested your blood you mean–”

“The Nemeton tested me, to see if I was a Hale, to see if I was worthy, I suppose.”

Stiles blinked. “And you are, worthy then?”

Peter’s eyes glowed red, and damn him but Stiles’s insides only tightened more.

Stiles exhaled shakily. “I guess so.”

The red didn’t fade though, as if it were a challenge or a reminder, perhaps, Peter making sure that Stiles remembered everything he was, everything he’d done and why. What did it mean that Stiles understood more of it than he’d ever thought possible? That he wanted him?

It didn’t matter what it meant.

Stiles stepped closer in spite of the crimson warning in Peter’s eyes. He reached for Peter’s face, his neck, and god, the way Peter leaned into the touch, like he’d been starved of it, of unconditional acceptance, it made Stiles ache. Stiles let out another shaky, desperate breath as he pulled him in, crashing their mouths together.

A low, rumbling growl of appreciation vibrated through Peter’s chest and Stiles groaned at the feel of it in his mouth.

Peter’s arms encircled him, holding him close and Stiles pressed into him because close wasn’t close enough. He tightened his arms around Peter’s neck, threading his fingers through his hair and holding on, panting between messy kisses into his mouth. Peter dropped onto the edge of the bed again and Stiles went with him, straddling his thighs, hands sliding down Peter’s chest through the tickling chest hair under his fingers, only to stop when he touched bandage and Peter hissed.

Stiles lifted his head, staring down into still piercing red eyes, chest heaving. Peter leaned up to try and catch his mouth but Stiles hesitated. “You’re still injured,” he managed, his words slurred over kiss-bruised lips.

Smiling up at him breathlessly, Peter all-but hummed, “then you’ll have to be very, very gentle with me.” His long, strong fingers slid up Stiles’s neck, dragging perfectly at the hair at the back of his head as they cupped him there, urging their mouths back together.

It was a clumsy, inelegant thing and all the more perfect for it.

Stiles had had hook-ups in college, quick hand jobs and some frenzied, clothes-on sex but nothing more and Peter was almost shaking under him, quivering with the need and pent-up hunger. Because Peter had been lonely too, hadn’t he? He’d been searching all this time for someone to accept every flaw, like Stiles and Stiles was drawn into him as if he had his own gravity.

Stiles’s hands kept moving, as frenetic as always, cupping Peter’s jaw, his shoulders, hungry to drift down his arms or chest and barely remembering to draw himself back each time. Until that was, Peter nudged his chin up with his nose, kissing just beneath his jaw, nipping lightly then soothing the sting with his tongue.

“Touch me,” Peter murmured against his throat, sucking and stroking with his lips and massaging Stiles’s scalp where he cupped his head. “Don’t hold back. You won’t hurt me.”

Stiles let out a breathy little laugh. He was so gone on him, his cockiness, his sarcasm that could rival Stiles’s own. Everything. He felt giddy with how much he wanted to sink his fingers into all of it until there was nothing left of Peter that he hadn’t claimed as his.

“Is that a challenge?” he panted.

He felt Peter’s chuckle against his throat and finally let his hands slide down to stroke over Peter’s arms, hard biceps taut and strong through the bandages. When his fingers drifted to Peter’s sides, he jolted at first and Stiles dipped his head to taste Peter’s mouth again.

“Ticklish?” he asked, smiling against Peter’s mouth.

“Oh, very.” Peter’s smile was perfect against his lips. The barest prickle of soft, designer stubble was the best caress and Stiles let his tongue dart forward as he brought their mouths together this time, rapidly losing himself, until Peter’s hands slid down his back, his sides, cupping his hips, a thumb brushing teasingly, just across the hollow of one hip-bone between his shirt and sweatpants.

A sharp breath pulled tight into his lungs and Peter drew back enough to meet his gaze and to look down. Stiles knew a rush of anxiety then, a lurch like falling as Peter paused, eyes catching on the glimpse of skin where his shirt had risen enough to expose a glimpse of the fractal pattern of scar tissue that stretched around his exposed hip and lower stomach.

Stiles tensed, muscles bunching as if to pull back, but he didn’t. He held Peter’s gaze, and unbidden, his thoughts spilled over his lips into the safety of the space between them.

“My dad has a scar from a bullet-wound he once got, and another one on his shoulder where some asshole knifed him when he was right out of his deputy training.” It didn’t make sense as he was saying it, but he had to make Peter understand. “When I was a kid I used to touch them, think they were so cool, that my dad was so brave. My mom used to say they were sexy, it was so gross but kinda sweet too, you know?” He gave a fond snort of laughter and it was weird, basically straddling Peter’s lap and talking about his dad, but he knew scars like that, or from surgery and things like that, they were medals of bravery and more but to him, the marks on his body just felt like a weakness.

“I don’t feel brave and there’s nothing _sexy_ about this, just…just a mess of scar tissue. Just a reminder that I was the weakness the Nogitsune locked onto all those years ago.” He’d dropped his gaze to where Peter’s hand still lay, just over his hip, between his waistband and the place where his shirt had lifted. He forced himself to raise his eyes then, however, eyes that had faded back to twin smouldering blue flames.

Stiles licked his lips distractedly, forcing himself to plough ahead. He couldn’t stop now. Peter had to know. Someone had to know.

“It looks like someone lit my veins up from the inside and watched them burn.” Maybe the wrong analogy to use with Peter, but he didn’t think Peter would want him to filter his words. He didn’t seem to recoil from the words at any rate, only process them as he stared unflinchingly into Stiles’s eyes, thumb tracing the scar tissue slowly.

“Show me?” Peter asked, soft and gentle, and Stiles only hesitated a moment before shimmying back onto his feet beside the bed. He held Peter’s gaze for a good few seconds before he reached for the hem of his shirt, tugging it off haphazardly, like pulling a band-aid off in one fast jerk to attempt to make the pain as brief as possible. Because if he wanted what they’d been building up to moments before, he pretty much had to take his clothes off. He couldn’t hide and have all at once.

Just as he’d done before, Stiles watched Peter’s face for any trace of a lie or pity or disgust, tried not to fidget or awkwardly fold his arms over himself, because his dad might’ve caught the odd glimpse when he’d walked in on Stiles, but otherwise no one else had seen it, Stiles had made sure of it. It was a constant reminder of the worst part of his life, besides losing his mom, a reminder of personal failure, of weakness of character and mind that that thing had taken him over so easily.

Then Peter’s hands reached out to touch him, to grasp his hips again and the crescendo of self-destructive thoughts fell away into white noise.

“It’s like a Lichtenburg scar, except those are meant to fade,” Peter noted, his thumb stroking the edge again where it stretched across Stiles’s lower stomach from his hip. Stiles didn’t want to look and he didn’t have to, he’d stared at them enough until he couldn’t look at them anymore. It, whatever it was. It did look like a scar from a lightning strike, only twisted somehow, a ugly mar that covered most of Stiles’s back and curved around his pelvis and stomach – fragmented patterns like someone had pressed smouldering leaves to his flesh until it curled up and puckered, mottling together in a mess on his stomach, just above his pubic bone.

He was standing between Peter’s legs and he wished he’d stepped back further, to put some space between the man he wanted and the part of himself he hated most, had never let anyone see. Peter’s hands slid up, splaying across his lower back and gently urging him closer, until he could press his nose into the mottled flesh across his pubic bone, all while caressing the scars that stretched up across his back.

Stiles shuddered where he stood, hands clenching into fists at his side because he just couldn’t reach out and touch, couldn’t make himself unclench, unwind from the wound up mess he’d become. He didn’t even realise he’d clenched his eyes shut until Peter spoke, breath hot against his skin.

“Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Stiles let his eyes flutter open and he watched as Peter waited to be sure he was watching, before stroking his hands over Stiles’s back again with something like reverence. Then he dragged his lips just barely across the last spindly stretch of scar tissue that dipped below his waistband and Stiles let out a choked cry. His knees gave out and Peter took his weight, rolling him onto the bed and bringing their mouths together again.

It was feather-light this time, every little kiss a question as he caressed Stiles’s body from nape to tailbone, from hip to breastbone, even letting his knuckles tease where the scar ended, just beneath his waistband, just dipping inside to caress until Stiles arched into him, groaning into his mouth like a dry sob more than a moan.

With his free hand, Peter smoothed Stiles’s hair back, stroking over his forehead where it was pinched tight with an almost pained, anxious expression. When Stiles opened his eyes again, Peter’s face was so close, eyes bright in the low light with something like awe and yet again he held Stiles’s gaze, as if it was his turn to make Stiles understand what was going through his head.

There's nothing wrong with you Stiles. The only thing that's wrong is how you see yourself, that's the source of your problem. If the Nogitsune set you alight then you’re burning brighter than anything I’ve ever seen. You survived a lightning strike, the kind of storm not just anybody could endure and you’re still here. There is nothing braver, nothing more attractive than that.”

There was no lie in his eyes, no flattery, no tricks. He looked raw, laid bare and as vulnerable as Stiles felt. Stiles wrapped his arms around his neck and didn’t let go. His eyes stung but insides fluttered and jumped. He let his mouth slide against Peter’s more slowly this time.

They lay wrapped together on the guest bed, kisses slow with gutting tenderness. Then Peter dragged his claws through the bandages of his chest impatiently.

“Want to feel you,” he murmured between kisses, crooning huskily when Stiles let his hands wander to map taut muscle and light, fine chest hair, the newly healed skin evidently tingling with sensitivity. Time passed without significance, the two of them enveloped in warmth and intimacy neither had felt before until they chased each other’s orgasm with slow, rolling thrusts against the other’s hip.

After, Stiles grudgingly stumbled to his feet, urging Peter into his own room. He took the soiled spare sheet with him and dumped it in his own hamper to deal with later. Not now. Now he had just about enough energy to stumble into bed. He flinched at first, but did not pull away when Peter curled around his exposed back, stroking over scarred skin like it was just another part of Stiles, another part of him he wanted to touch and claim and worship – Stiles knew because he felt that exact same way about him.

It’d take some getting used to, he thought absently, trying to relax into the touch because it did feel good, so good to be close with no barriers between them from either side.

“Thank you,” Peter said into his ear, just as he was drifting off. “For trusting me with the thing you hate most about yourself.”

It wasn’t until then that Stiles realised, he knew all of the worst parts of Peter. He knew his flaws, knew his past, the good and the bad. He’d known him at his absolute worst and he still wanted him. And Peter knew everything too now and he was still here. He didn’t think he was weak, or damaged or pathetic or anything else, he just wanted him, scars and all.

He didn’t know where it was going with Peter, if it would last or not, but he thought that was a pretty good start. For the first time in a long while, he couldn’t wait to find out what was just around the corner.

Anxiety about falling asleep nipped at the edges of his post-orgasmic glow but as if he could read his thoughts, Peter wrapped an arm fully around him and nosed into the back of his neck sleepily. “Don’t worry, you’re not going anywhere tonight, Stiles, not without me.”

Stiles licked his lips thoughtfully for a moment before admitting, “Sometimes when I wake up, whether I sleepwalk or not, there’s a moment where I can’t…I can’t remember where I am, or what I’ve done, or if…” He hesitated for only a heartbeat. “If I’m really back there, if I’m gonna hear him in my head. There’s always a moment when I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

The arm around his torso tightened just a little, Peter’s breath warm and comforting against his skin. “Well, if that happens. I’ll be here to remind you exactly how real you are.”

Not long after that Stiles finally started to drift, knowing that if he so much as twitched, Peter would wake along with him.

*

Before he’d drifted off, he’d managed to shoot his dad a text.

_Hey Pops. Avoid the spare room + be sure to knock + wait for a response before you come in my room. If there’s blood on the couch I’ll clean it. Explain later._

When he woke in the morning, it was to a warm but empty bed, signalling that Peter had only just vacated. He didn’t feel too bitter about that, he felt far too well-rested for that and besides which, he didn’t doubt that Peter had been listening to him from downstairs the whole time, which was both creepy and comforting. A special blend of the two that was just Peter, he thought fondly.

There were voices from below though. He slowly came back into full awareness and left the best night sleep he’d had in forever fast behind as he realised it was his dad and Peter talking.

Shit.

He hurried to get dressed and glanced at his dad’s reply on his phone as he hurried down the stairs.

_Do I even want to know?_

It was the most surreal thing ever to see his dad and Peter drinking their morning coffee at the same time. So surreal, in fact, that for a while he just stood in the doorway, staring at them.

“Am I actually awake?” he asked as he took a seat warily at the table, pourin a coffee for himself out of the pot.

His dad lowered the newspaper to stare at him. “That’s what I thought when Peter Hale joined me for coffee this morning after sharing a bed with my son.”

Stiles choked on his coffee and behind his own cup, Peter smirked.

He was in for an interesting morning, that was for sure.

*

“I don’t get it,” Malia said, her brow furrowed and nose wrinkled. “I thought you said he was Satan in a v-neck?”

Across the room from where everyone else was gathered around the large dining table in Derek’s loft, long-since refurbished, Peter looked far too amused on hearing Stiles’s former opinion of him. Perhaps it was still a little valid after all.

“I mean, he sorta still is,” Stiles replied, “or he can be. But not with me. And I mean, I can be sort of an asshole too so it kind of fit but I’m not telling you because I want your permission or whatever, I want your understanding.”

Malia stared at him, still wearing that same frown, looking to Peter again, before shrugging. She had a simplistic way of viewing things that Stiles sort of envied. Perhaps it was due to how much time she’d spent in her animal form, but she didn’t have a perception of good and evil the way some people did. She saw Peter as an ally from the times he’d worked with them, due to her limited experience of his past, she saw the connection between him and Stiles, Stiles who was her pack and that was as far as she cared to look.

Kira sat quietly, smiling reassuringly at Stiles from between Scott and Lydia. Derek had known since before Stiles knew about it, probably from scent or from Stiles’s intrusive questioning, but he hadn’t seemed surprised, hadn’t reacted at all really which was typical Derek. He just silently watched Scott and Lydia, as if their reaction determined which way this would go. Stiles felt much the same way.

“Dude,” Scott sighed at last, smoothing his dark hair that was growing out again and hanging messily into his eyes out of his face. “I was just sort of getting used to the idea of him being not entirely evil, being kinda useful–”

“Praise indeed,” Peter muttered, but Scott continued as if he hadn’t heard him.

“I wasn’t ready for _this_.”

Stiles bit the inside of his mouth. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course it does,” Scott said, sounding hurt. “He’s an alpha now. Like…what does that even mean? You’re in his pack now, right?” He looked to Derek then too. “Does that go the same for you?”

Derek held Scott’s gaze for a long time. Over the last few years, he’d been working with Scott closely, he and Isaac and Scott were like brothers in everything but in blood and Stiles could tell this was huge for them, for the stability of the growing pack.

After a long moment of bated breath and tension thicker than smoke, Derek found his voice. “Well, that sort of depends on Scott.”

Looking confused, Scott stared between him and Peter. “On me?”

Derek shrugged. “Before the fire, my mother worked with other alphas. There were like sub-packs within the pack as a whole. When she…” He hesitated, face hardening. “When she died, they left, moved on, afraid of being ‘cleaned up’ by the hunters that were still skulking around. But before all that it worked. There was harmony. The responsibilities were shared.”

“Talia was superior,” Peter continued from where he was leaning against the far wall, the warm champagne paint an almost homely backdrop to his tense stance. “She was of higher rank than any other alpha in thousands of miles because of her reputation, her own actions, but generally speaking in larger territories, multiple alphas, multiple packs quite often work together to keep the area safe.”

Scott narrowed his eyes. “And that’s what you want to do? Work with me? One pack with two alphas? I don’t even get how that would work – I’m pretty sure we’ve never agreed on anything in all the years we’ve known each other. Not even when you’ve been helping us out.”

“That’s the point,” Derek said levelly, “you’re not meant to agree on everything. You’ve meant to be two opposite ends of the scale, balancing each other. That’s the point.”

It made sense, when it was spelled out like that and Stiles had always wondered how packs managed to live in big cities or large sprawling states.

“So who would be in whose pack?” Scott asked cautiously, but not defensively, which was something.

Peter rolled his eyes. “You’re not listening–”

“It’s hard to explain to people who aren’t born into this,” Derek said, cutting Peter off. “But it’s not like separate packs. It’s…” He seemed to visibly struggle for the right words but to Stiles’s surprise, Isaac, who’d been quiet throughout the exchange spoke up.

“It’s like a class with two teachers,” he suggested helpfully. “We’re the same team, the same unit, but there are two leaders giving us different advice, helping us make the right choice. Right?”

Scott blinked at him, clearly processing the information.

“That’s…a pretty good analogy,” Derek agreed, looking to Peter, who didn’t disapprove, just looked to Stiles, as if he were the most important thing in this.

Stiles felt his face heat a little when he realised that was probably quite accurate, actually.

“So…we’re not splitting up?” Scott asked, as if he just had to be sure.

Stiles reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Nobody is leaving buddy. And Peter has pretty much been in your pack for a while now, he’s just…been promoted, I guess. Co-captain. You did that before despite some differences, right?”

Scott levelled him with a glare. Despite everything that’d happened, Jackson had still been a massive douche bag. “Because Finstock said I had to.”

“Yeah, well if you can set differences aside for Finstock can you maybe at least try and work with Peter? For like…the benefit of your pack and Beacon Hills and Derek and me?”

With a heavy sigh, Scott looked at Stiles a final time before meeting Peter’s eyes across the room. “Just remember, we’re a team, you’re not above me and if this is gonna work, we gotta work together, alright?”

“And if either of you start using me as your ‘mom’ in this situation I will kick both your asses,” Stiles assuredly them both with no room for argument. It’d be strenuous, there was no doubt, but it would work. Peter had his history, his flaws but so did Scott. They’d both made some not so stellar choices and maybe, coming at the situation from two completely different backgrounds, together they’d make one pretty good alpha.

Derek looked as relieved as he did and Isaac even relaxed a little. But just as Stiles felt himself falling into some place of security, Lydia rose to her feet. Without saying a word, she strode across the room and came to a halt in front of Peter. For all her diminutive size, despite her killer heels, she towered over him in every other way and Peter, to his credit didn’t shift his gaze from hers.

The room was silent and Stiles was about to get to his feet as well, if only to find out what the hell was going on, but before he could, Lydia turned to face him.

“This can work. It can work pretty well, actually, but I think we’re going to need a mediator, at least until you two prove you can play nicely together.”

Stiles twitched. “I am _not_ playing middle man between my best friend and my…well…” His face burned. “Well you know.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Please, you’re far too easily distracted by Peter and you have a Scott McCall shaped blind spot.”

“And who are you nominating for the job, Miss Martin?” Peter asked, but the smile in his voice said he knew exactly where this was going and he was intrigued at the very least.

“Well, myself of course.”

Stiles buried his face in his hands. What had he gotten himself into?

*

He shouldn’t have doubted Lydia really, or Peter and Scott for that matter. He couldn’t say they always agreed or got along, but in terms of the pack and Beacon Hills, they always seemed to come to a solution. Peter had the benefit of experience and knowledge in the supernatural world that Derek had been too young to remember as well, while Scott evidently had a slightly tighter moral code.

By the time Stiles had finished his training and was a fully certified sheriff’s deputy, he’d say things in the pack were pretty much settled into a routine and Beacon Hills had never been quieter.

He split his free time between his friends and his dad and Peter and little by little, the anxious inner debate that seemed to pre-empt any outing or meet-up started to dwindle.

The dark cloud that had smothered everything hadn’t vanished by any means but it had lifted higher, allowed more breathing room. The more he could breathe, the more he could sleep, the better he could focus on the things that made life a little bit better.

Peter wasn’t the sole reason for that, but he was a part of it. Because he’d helped Stiles start to see himself, helped him to like who he was and Stiles thought that was probably the best gift anyone could give.

Stiles stretched as he woke, sprawling lazily across the ridiculous king bed Peter had in his apartment. He had fancy shutters over his windows, but when he got up before Stiles, he’d sometimes slant them open just a bit, so that Stiles could wake up gradually to the morning light. He was kind of awesome and oddly doting in that way.

Kill a feral omega with his bare hands, sure, but then also spoil his younger boyfriend ridiculously because that was the way he showed affection.

Stiles was so totally gone for the being fussed over to be honest, he didn’t really even put up a token protest anymore.

The bedroom door opened and Stiles cracked an eye open, seeing Peter walk in with two huge paper bags from the coffee shop down the street.

“Mmmm, what’s with the sugary breakfast?” Stiles asked around a yawn as Peter sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a cool hand up over Stiles’s warm, bare back.

“I have it on good authority that it’s a time-honoured rite of passage for the newly certified deputy to bring doughnuts in at the end of their first month.”  
  


Stiles stretched under the touch leisurely, the smell of fresh doughnuts and Peter filling his senses. “Strictly speaking, I think the newest deputy is meant to get them himself,” he mused, burying his nose in the pillow when Peter dragged his up Stiles’s spine, a tickling, bristly, soft pass of his lips up over Stiles’s shoulder and cheek until Stiles relented and turned his head enough so that Peter could steal a kiss.

“I tread a thin grey line between good and evil,” Peter said dryly.

Stiles captured his mouth again briefly, before rolling over and ensnaring Peter in a tangle of arms, legs and sheets.

“Did we go anywhere fun last night?” he asked between kisses, Stiles’s code to ask if he’d gone for a walk last night. It had died down recently, but he always had the odd incident.

“Slow night, you didn’t even snore.”

Stiles swatted at his shoulder and then pulled the sleep-warm sheets up over both their heads.

As much as he was enjoying the leisurely wake up, Stiles reluctantly slid out from under Peter and staggered to the bathroom.

By the time Stiles showed his face in the open-plan kitchen dining area where Peter was on his second coffee, Stiles was mostly dressed. Except for his uniform shirt which had apparently been cast across the back of the sofa last night when Peter ‘ _welcomed’_ him home.

It wasn’t too creased, it’d do.

Peter offered him that warm, slow smile and started pouring a coffee for Stiles. As Stiles grabbed his shirt however, Peter lifted his head.

“Scott is going to be at the door any second.”

“And you know this because of your alpha ears?”

Peter levelled him with a dry look. “I know because I buzzed him into the building a moment ago.

Stiles laughed and as he shook out his shirt, he cast a glance at the door and realised it was ajar slightly. It opened not a few seconds later, just as he was pulling his shirt on.

“Morning,” Scott offered brightly and Stiles gave him a half wave, half salute between buttoning his shirt.

“Lookin’ smart there deputy, should I confess to speeding on my way over here?”

Stiles grinned. “If your speeding was on the alpha two-legged mobile I don’t think they’ve invented tickets for that yet, Scotty,” he laughed, rounding the kitchen island and reaching for the coffee Peter had poured for him. It was sweet and milky, barely coffee really, and in a Batman mug that read _‘Always be yourself…unless you can be Batman, then always be Batman.’_

It stuck out like a sore thumb in Peter’s luxury apartment to be honest but he loved it all the more for that.

Peter let his hand brush against his back as he passed, setting his own empty mug in the dishwasher.

“Scott and I have a meeting with a pack from New Jersey. They’re some of the werewolves who used to live in Beacon Hills when Talia was alpha, part of the larger pack, if you like.”

Stiles nodded around his cup. “Mmm, good plan, I like it. Make connections. Gain allies.” Their pack was becoming pretty well-established actually, a far cry away from the divided mess they had been when he was sixteen years old.

“We’re meeting them at the diner downtown,” Scott added, “Picking up Isaac on the way.” He grinned mischievously. “Peter wants to set him up with the alpha’s daughter.”

Stiles nearly choked on his coffee. “What the heck?! You have no shame.”

Peter’s answering smile was both predatory and delighted. “I consider it one of my finest features,” he said, leaning in to steal a kiss as he plucked the keys from the fruit bowl on the kitchen island. “Want a ride?”

Before Stiles could answer though, Scott chimed in. “Are you taking the Aston Martin? Can I drive?”

Stiles watched Peter consider this for a moment before tossing the keys to Scott. “Go warm her up for us, I’ll just grab the welcoming gift I prepared for the alpha.”

“And I’ll grab the doughnuts,” Stiles said.

Scott didn’t stick around for Peter to change his mind. Sometimes he and Peter got along fairly well. Mostly Peter’s bribery attempt failed, but sometimes even Scott couldn’t resist.

“Like I said, no shame,” Stiles accused Peter without any heat. “Aston Martin rides for Scott, presents for visiting packs, you are way too smooth for me.”

Peter slid his fingers into Stiles’s belt just as Stiles started tucking his shirt in, his knuckles grazing Stiles’s belly affectionately.

“If you look very hard, I’m sure you’ll find me very coarse around the edges,” he murmured against Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles kissed him. “Me too, I’m even pretty sharp in places,” he teased.

Peter’s eyes flashed. “I”ll be sure to give you a thorough inspection later, Deputy.”

They were a pretty good fit, Stiles thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I tagged everything but it's very late/early here so feel free to let me know if I missed something in the tags :)
> 
> Also I have no beta (and did I mention it's late) so please forgive any mistakes.


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